Space, Geometry, and Kants Transcendental Deduction of the Categories

Hardcover | December 15, 2014

Thomas C. Vinci aims to reveal and assess the structure of Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure Reason called the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories." At the end of the first part of the Deduction in the B-edition Kant states that his purpose is achieved: to show that allintuitions in general are subject to the categories. On the standard reading, this means that all of our mental representations, including those originating in sense-experience, are structured by conceptualization. But this reading encounters an exegetical problem: Kant states in the second part of the Deduction that a major part of what remains to be shown is that empirical intuitions are subject to the categories. How can this be if it has already been shown that intuitions in general are subject to thecategories? Vinci calls this the Triviality Problem, and he argues that solving it requires denying the standard reading. In its place he proposes that intuitions in general and empirical intuitions constitute disjoint classes and that, while all intuitions for Kant are unified, there are two kindsof unification: logical unification vs. aesthetic unification. Only the former is due to the categories. A second major theme of the book is that Kant's Idealism comes in two versions - for laws of nature and for objects of empirical intuition - and that demonstrating these versions is the ultimate goal of the Deduction of the Categories and the similarly structured Deduction of the Concepts of Space,respectively. Vinci shows that the Deductions have the argument structure of an inference to the best explanation for correlated domains of explananda, each arrived at by independent applications of Kantian epistemic and geometrical methods.

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Thomas C. Vinci aims to reveal and assess the structure of Kant's argument in the Critique of Pure Reason called the "Transcendental Deduction of the Categories." At the end of the first part of the Deduction in the B-edition Kant states that his purpose is achieved: to show that allintuitions in general are subject to the categories. ...

Thomas C. Vinci (B.A, Toronto; Ph.D, Pitt.) has spent 35 years in the Philosophy Department at Dalhousie University, from which he retired as Professor in 2012. The author of Cartesian Truth (OUP 1998), he has also published on Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Kant, and in contemporary
epistemology, philosophy of science and d...

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION1. A PRIORI FORM VS. PURE REPRESENTATION IN KANT'S THEORY OF INTUITION1: THE A PRIORI FORM OF INTUITION AND THE CONTAINER VIEW2: PURE FORM OF INTUITIONS VS. PURE FORMAL INTUITION3. SUMMARIES OF THE THREE GROUNDS FOR THE CONTAINER VIEW2. THE METAPHYSICAL EXPOSITIONS AND TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM I1. INTRODUCTION2: THREE ACCOUNTS OF THE METAPHYSICAL EXPOSITIONS3: KANT'S ARGUMENTS FROM GEOMETRY IN THE PROLEGOMENA4: THE NON-GEOMETRICAL EXPOSITIONS5. WHY THE "GENERAL CONCEPT OF SPACES IN GENERAL" IS NOT A CONCEPT FOR KANT3. KANT'S THEORY OF INTENTIONALITY1. KANTIAN INTENTIONALITY AS BRENTANO-INTENTIONALITY2. KANT'S PROJECTIONISM3. SPATIAL FORM AND THE REPRESENTATIONAL CAPACITY OF INTUITIONS IN GENERAL3.1 The map analogy3. 2 Applying the Map-analogy to Kant's Theory of Intentionality4. KANT'S THEORY OF GEOMETRY AND TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM II1: INTRODUCTION2. KANT'S DOCTRINE OF GEOMETRICAL METHOD IN THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON2.1. Kant's geometrical method2.2 The necessity of geometry as counterfactual necessity3. ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATIONS4. OBJECTIONS4.1 Objections from Friedman4.2 Objections from Waxman5. THE TRANSCENDENTAL EXPOSITIONS OF THE CONCEPTS OF SPACE6. KANT AND MODERN PHYSICS5. THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES I1: INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES ABOUT?2. WHAT ARE THE SUBJECTIVE CONDITIONS OF THINKING?3. THE AFFINITY ARGUMENT3.1 Introduction3.2 The Affinity Argument: background3.3 The Affinity Argument4. TRANSITION TO THE B-EDITION DEDUCTION6. APPEARANCES, INTUITIONS AND JUDGMENTS OF PERCEPTION1: APPEARANCES: THE UNDETERMINED OBJECTS OF EMPIRICAL INTUITION1.1 Are appearances constituted by the understanding?: a preliminary argument1.2. What are appearances?2. INTUITIONS IN GENERAL2.1.Introduction2.2. Section 15: Synthesis, Intuitions, Judgments3. JUDGMENTS OF PERCEPTION, THE DOCTRINE OF SCHEMATISM AND AESTHETICALLY UNIFIED INTUITIONS3.1. Judgments of perception in the Prolegomena3.2 Longuenesse and the case for finding a doctrine of judgments of perception in the Critique of Pure Reason3.3 Judgments of perception, empirical schemata and empirical concepts3.4 Aesthetically unified intuitions3.5 The problem of sensory illusion for Kant7. TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION II: THE B-EDITION TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTIONPART I: THE FIRST HALF OF KANT'S B-EDITION TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES1. INTRODUCTION2. THE ANALYTICAL POWER OF APPERCEPTION3. THE PROPOSITIONAL FORM OF JUDGMENTS OF PERCEPTION4. PROBLEMS FROM SECTIONS 17 AND 18, REVISITED5. THE ANALYTICAL PRINCIPLE OF APPERCEPTION6. SYNOPSIS OF THE FIRST PART OF THE B-EDITION DEDUCTION7. CONCLUSION OF PART I AND TRANSITION TO PART IIPART II: THE SECOND HALF OF KANT'S B-EDITION TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES1. WHY THE DEDUCTION IN THE B-EDITION NEEDS A SECOND PART2. THE SECOND PART OF THE B-EDITION DEDUCTION2.1 Introduction2.2 The Argument of Section 262.2.1 Introduction2.2.2: Proving that the unity of space is an intellectual condition: the subjective phase of the Deduction in the B-edition2.2.3: The proof that the unity of space has empirical objective validity; the proof of Nomic Prescriptivism; and the proof that the unity of empirical intuitions is the unity of the categories2.2. 4. Kant's explanation of how logically unified empirical intuitions come to be in accord with the unity of space and time2.2.5 Some final thoughts on the strength of Kant's argumentPRIMARY SOURCES OF KANT'S WRITINGSREFERENCESINDEX